Did a little roadtrip for the day with some of my girls, Mo Malone, Brittany Campbell (aka Beecam), Dani Windhausen and Denise Baca. We left around 9am, and got to the Allen park around noon. It was easily 100+ degrees out and we had hoped this meant it would be empty but it wasn’t. Swarms of kids on scooters infested every corner of the park. We still managed to have an awesome time, film some clips and shoot some pics.
We headed over to lewisville bowl around 3pm and the heat was so bad that the park was deserted. We discovered real fast that there was barely any shade anywhere. Thank goodness for 7-11 big gulp cups of ice and 2 for $3 gatorades or we would be dead.
We wore ourselves out in the heat, stopped in Deep Ellum for some tacos with our friend Johnny and then booked it over to the Alliance Skatepark for the last few minutes of the session. Here’s a few pics from the trip:

Dani was roasting this bowl, but we still couldn’t escape scooter wrath.

Mo shot this one of me, so stoked! I sent this one to Freegun as a thanks for the new tank top 🙂 thanks Mo!

Alliance skatepark

Mo shredding the vert ramp

Eventually, we made it back home sunburned and dehydrated but amped on going back to Dallas soon nonetheless! Super fun trip! I think we all tried some new things, what a refreshing trip. For more pics from our trip, can peep our Instagram(s) and follow: @denise_baca @beecam @mo_malone and @nina_burrito..

In the meantime I went swimming and riding everyday before work, Beecam and I watched some of the Vans bowl contest at the US open of surfing Huntington Beach, CA, there was a live stream on the computer while we took turns blowing up this floatable donut to bring to Barton Springs.

Then some homies from Long Island came to town, rolling about 7 deep! Hailing mostly from Glen Cove and Locust Valley, we had Steve, Mike (aka Junkyard dog), Jake, Dave, Matt, Pauly C, staying with Elliot and Tom 516. These comedians were a trip, we had a great time showing them around Austin.
Their final day in town we hit up the San Marcos skatepark, went swimming and then hit up Lockhart for some BBQ and and another skatepark Sesh there. Too many laughs, hopefully they will come back soon!

Dani and Denise just finished a little roommate edit, just in time for Yeah Zine video contest! I am stoked to have helped film some clips and contribute to their project..
Watch their edit here:https://vimeo.com/71389006

In addition, Beecam put together a fun little BMX Babes in Austin edit for the same contest filmed mainly at Housepark from majority of the local gal shredders. I have a few riding clips 🙂 thanks B!
Watch that one here:

What an amazing week! I am getting ready to leave for Xgames in a few hours after work..then continuing on the yeah Zine trip! Woo!! Post more soon..
Keep having fun in the meantime 😉

The last few weeks since my All Wheels Extreme trip have been non-stop, after facing plenty of ups and a few downs, I’m happy to have made it back to the surface!

It all started not even week or so home from Ohio! I was home and starting to catch up with friends and beat the heat. I decided to meet up with my good friends Adrianne and Sam for a swim at Barton Springs pool. After a nice long swim, we parted ways, and in the midst of carrying my pile of clothes towards the exit, my phone rang on vibrate and I totally fumbled for it in the pile of stuff I was carrying and splash! It fell right in Thanks to a group of little girls swimming around exploring with goggles, they volunteered to fish my iPhone out for me. After a day or two of trying the bag of rice trick and no luck, I was able to get it replaced for only $50! Thank God for Apple Care Plus insurance!!! phew!!!! That was kind of sucky few days of not having a phone, thankfully I had backed it up just in time!

Carrying on, I believe it was a day after the phone incident, a bunch of us got together for a session at the Walnut Creek Pumptrack. It’s so peaceful out there, but occasionally when you’re trying to get psyched up to hit the jumps, you need some music to help you through! My gal friend Dani and I always crack each other up whenever we ride at pumptrack together. Before we do trains through main line we always try to belt out a fun-get-psyched tune. Anything ridiculous from our favorite Salt N’ Pepa “Slide, Push it..” straight into making guitar sounds from Black Sabbath “Supernaut” haha we do our best to keep the energy up and the laughs going each lap, anything helps when you’re attempting to beat the heat and get some good runs in. We were having a great session for awhile until Dani did a sweet toboggan over the first one in main, got way stoked, and over shot the second jump a little far right, almost going over the berm. She bailed and put her leg down a little weird and ghost rode her bike. I thought she was alright because she seemed to be laughing, but when we ran over to help her up, we realized her leg was pretty jacked. A bunch of us helped carry her down the trail and out to the car, gave her a harmonica’s worth of cigarettes to puff on to feel better. (haha even though I don’t smoke and can’t stand cigarettes, I felt like this was a more than appropriate occasion to encourage smoking multiple stogies at once haha and in my car no less her leg looked jacked!!) We loaded her in the back of my Subaru “forester”, which was now converted into a rally car style ambulance blasting Metallica “Motorbreath” on full blast to the hospital. It would take a few days to find out for sure what she broke. Bummer!

Photo by Octavio Octurno from Yeah Zine issue 5 Release jam

So I end up going to my first ever pilates class the next morning with Adrianne, super rad! And as I’m leaving feeling awesome, my cousin Melanie hit me up with some sad news; our grandpa Yayo had passed away. I was floored by the news as I had just spoken to him a week before. ‘walked my bike home that day.

The next day I also got a phone call that my friend and Etnies teammate Aaron Ross was feeling under the weather and was supposed to be spending the day with some cancer kids at a local children’s hospital. Since the kids immunes systems are already challenged it’s best to keep anyone not 100% good health from getting too close. This actually was amazing way for me to keep my mind off of grandpa bring some excitement and smiles to some kids facing some real challenges. Aaron hooked me up with a bunch of Odyssey and Sunday stickers to pass out along with whatever Etnies and DK stickers I had. It was definitely uplifting to share and put some smiles on some new faces, these kids go through a lot, and having them do some little bike races in the hospital courtyard was a lot of fun. One kids dad even joined in haha good times!

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After my visit with the kids, I got home to a package of goodies from Freegun Underwear! There were some swimsuits, bras and underwear, thank you Fat Tony for the hookup! So with only a few hours to kill before work and then getting on a plane to NY for grandpa, I figured I’d try one of those swimsuits out down at Barton Springs if the rope swing was up. I got there and it sure was! Thanks Freegun!

Stoked on the Freegun swimsuit

I then raced home got ready for work. The trip home to say good bye was by far one of the wildest. I worked until 4am, barely slept, made it on a flight eventually to North Carolina, and due to stormy weather, any and all flights out of charlotte into the tri-state area were cancelled! The delays had already made me miss the final day of the wake, and now almost the funeral the next morning! No trains, planes or buses were going to be able to get me to NY until the following evening, after grandpa would already be buried. Not accepting of this,it was 7pm on a Sunday, I rented a car, and drove 700 miles from Charlotte, NC to NY. I was delirious! Had my friends sending me funny photos and calling me to stay awake. I rolled into NJ around 4:30am, not even realizing what time it was had texted a few friends as I passed their exits. Haha sorry homies! Oddly enough, my homie George D hit me up and he had just rolled up back in to NJ from his band playing a show in Boston! Met up at a rest stop to say what up, and I think honestly that totally saved me from falling asleep at the wheel for the last leg of the trip. It was rad to see George for like 10 minutes, first time in like 10 years haha! Still shreddin’ bikes, playing music and driving the VW!

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pretty much how i saw the road signs pulling into NY as the sun was rising

700+miles, 4 coffees, a gallon of water, some flaming hot cheetos, and $41 in tolls and about 12 hours later, I made it to my mom’s in NY, changed my clothes and went straight to the funeral. I did it! I got to say good bye to grandpa yayo! I slept so hard that night. It was so hard to say goodbye, but I feel so much better that I got there in time and got to catch up with family.

He lived 89 years, was a hard worker, and a great man. When I was younger I couldn’t pronounce “Gustavo” his name too well or at all, and “Yayo” was how I managed to say it and it stuck haha! Yayo, in 1960 he moved with my grandma Olga, my aunts Liz, Janette, uncle Gus and my dad, Irving, from Colombia to NY. He worked for Pan Am, and eventually Avianca the Colombian airlines as an airplane mechanic. He was old school, very traditional values, and a man who only wanted the best for everyone. I feel like our time together wasn’t long enough, but I’m happy to have known him and even after the fact learn what an interesting life he lived. I miss him dearly, and already miss making him crack a smile over the phone..

Grandpa Yayo and I in the lobby of his place, on one of my crazy short NY visits last year, RIP gramps, I already miss ya!

Man that was rough, but it was rad to see family and catch up and be there for each other. Not even two days home in Austin, I hopped on a plane to Woodward West in Tehachapi, CA for DK Bicycles week with the campers. My friend Brittany had been meaning to go visit her friends and Juke Life teammates and so I told her I was going and that she should too! So she booked her ticket and boom! We were both at Woodward West about a week later shredding!!

First day there and we got to shred the Megaramp quarter! 28 ft tall!

I sent Mom a photo of me riding the quarter and this was her response ha!

Camp was a blast, we all learned “surfers” from my teammate Dane Beardsley, among some other new moves..

And so it was a fun week at Woodward West, I got off the plane back in Austin and went straight to work again until 4am, and then woke up and it was the Fun Fun Fun Fest Aqua Olympics! Basically a really fun PRE-party for the organizers of the Fun Fun Fun fest a huge music festival that takes place in November here in Austin with an indie stage, hip hop stage and a metal stage usually has a mini ramp and some amazing bands. This Aqua Olympics thing had a huge mega-ramp style roll-in lake-jump! It was my first time lake jumping ever!!!! I hopped on some other peoples bikes and bombed into the lake all day. Even got Mo Malone to give it a go! However, the next few days I felt like I fell out of a building haha after a few 360’s landing head first into the water I imagine that’s what did me in. ha! Oh well, here’s some sweet photos my friend Hippi Josh TRAILPIRATE.com posted:

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Sooo yeah ahhaa the adventure continues!!!!! I managed to catch up with girl Dani and her busted ass leg, turns out she broke her tibia, and had to get surgery to fix it. Pretty cool procedure they did, instead of putting a metal plate in with screws, they now use a “tight rope” which is supposed to help improve overall healing and range of motion after the fact, and will be less likely to have to be removed later on.

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I took her to her appointment to get her stitches out, and so far so good!! Here is a view of the tight rope. Healing vibes your way girl!

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Aside from that, I’ve seriously been just playing catching up. From blogs, laundry, bills, roommate beef, you name it haha it is good to be home. I will add some more photos later. Even though this one is long I can’t believe how much I still left out! Well, I will go ahead and end this long ass update with a quote from Ferris Beuller, (fun fact: this movie quote was used as the opening line before the music started in All Wheels Extreme show at cedar point this summer, for 2 weeks 3-4 times a day it will forever be engrained in my head..seemingly appropriate quote for my endless summer): “life moves pretty fast you know, if you don’t stop and take a look around once in awhile, you could miss it!”